Topped the tunnel beds with a fresh layer of home made compost.

Corn Smut

Some of our sweetcorn has Corn Smut (fungus), also known as corn truffles. It won't win many prizes for looks but has a lovely mushroomy sweetcorn flavour and is apparently quite sought after in some countries. Once cooked this lot topped toasted open cheese and tomato sandwiches.

Radicchio Palla Rossa

Radicchio. Brushed the hearts with olive oil before cooking on a griddle, the main dish is a gratin of onion, potato, celeriac, beetroot and courgette with cheddar, brie and wholemeal breadcrumbs. 

Flowers

The sunflowers are self set.

Statice hanging in the barn to dry.

Celeriac

How they looked in early April

and now

No dig potato update

Apart from a few volunteer Kiflis that have been left to grow, all the spuds are now lifted. 
Some were planted under leaves and some under wood chips.

Pro's of using leaves
Easy to mound up
Easy to harvest (also easy to furtle about for early tubers as they became large enough) 
Tubers were quite clean

Cons of leaves
In windy conditions leaves needed holding down with chicken wire until the canopy had grown
More slug damage than normal

Pros of using wood chips
Easy to mound up
Relatively easy to furtle (compared to soil)
Easy to harvest 

Cons of wood chips
More scab 
Chips mixing with soil as tubers were lifted

(Starting with better decomposed chippings would probably reduce the downsides).

Tunnel Update

Cucumbers every day, peppers look promising and the toms are going strong.

Palermo peppers, grown from seed saved earlier from supermarket peppers.

No-Dig, so far so good

So far the no-dig method is working well. Hardly any weeds, less watering and the plot looks vibrant.

Golden Bear white rot success

We usually lose about 50% of our onions to white rot but have only lost two out of 120 from this years crop of Golden Bear.  It's possible the one bed is less contaminated plus the dry weather may have helped but rot still claimed half the Red Baron nearby.
GB is marketed as resistant to downy mildew but I read it has an increasing reputation as having some white rot resistance too. Maybe the roots produce less allicin so the rot isn't triggered into being active. Whatever the reason I'll be growing them again next year. 

Home made cheese and garlic loaf

Wholemeal cheese and elephant garlic loaf, should go well with Mediterranean style veg.

Looking good

Everything's suddenly picked up.

First aubergines of the season

Seared the slices on a cast iron griddle and served with goats cheese and pasta. Warmed toms and beans with garlic to bring out the flavour.

Tunnel update

Tunnel's doing well to date. Currently harvesting carrots, spring onion, cukes, french beans and the odd hot wax chilli. Aubergines and toms are coming along nicely.

Onion Golden Bear

We're trying Golden Bear onions which are said to be resistant to white rot. So far only one has had the rot but unfortunately, despite leaving them under enviromesh until mid May, some have been attacked by the allium leaf miner. (It's only supposed to lay eggs until mid April).

Spuds so far

Just an update on the spuds. The potatoes planted under leaf mulch showed before those under wood chips (probably the wood was slower in warming up) but all are looking good.

Leaf mulched potatoes are nearest

Maincrop Kiflis mulched with woodchip are nearest with celeriac in the foreground

Garlic Harvest

We struggle with white rot on our allotment and have yet to find an area that isn't affected to some degree.
Very dry conditions in April helped in holding it back this year but eventually the garlic started to show signs so it was a case of lift it or lose it. In the end 20% of the crop was affected which for us is quite low and leaves us with 138 bulbs of various sizes. Sounds a lot but taking into account small bulbs and cloves for next years seed it should be about right.
As an experiment one bed was split into three bands with compost mulch in the centre and wood chip at the ends. I can't say there was any noticeable differences in the crop.

Strawbs are starting

Elephant Garlic

Ellie garlic's doing well so far

Celeriac

Potting on celeriac in the greenhouse. 

Rhubarb and Frogitat

More of a general wildlife area really with plenty of hidey holes.

Mushroom

An unexpected bonus growing in the mulch. It's a Morel (morchella conica). Only the one but still nice to find.

Update on the tunnel, pleased with everything so far.